


Orange

by whenyoudesertme (phrenk)



Category: Arashi (Band), Japanese Actor RPF, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Multi, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-18
Updated: 2009-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:30:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrenk/pseuds/whenyoudesertme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The members of Arashi work nights as the freight team for Home Depot. And then there is cuddling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orange

**Author's Note:**

> Gen or fivesome or Ohmiya? I went with all of the above. Originally posted [here](http://whenyoudesertme.livejournal.com/10384.html).
> 
> This is AU in many senses. In this universe there are Home Depots in Japan. I wrote out a lot of bits of this universe as a reference for my day-dreaming at my terrible job (which was the same as their terrible jobs in this AU.) These parts are the only ones with a narrative, so they are somewhat disjointed when put together, for which I apologize.
> 
> Heavy machinery in use at Home Depot, at least that are mentioned here:  
> The order picker/OP, you're harnessed in on a platform and go up and down with it.  
> The reach truck, or reach, or lift: a fork lift used in the interior of the store because it's very maneuverable in small spaces.  
> Big Cat/small Cat: used in outside garden and lumber, where there are bigger aisles. Looks like construction machinery, with the yellowness and largeness and they're gas-powered, unlike the others which are battery-powered. Aiba's in lumber so he is nearly always on one of the Cats.

The five main night crew members had been working together for about six months, all having come in within a few weeks of each other. Their manager had set them up with what they needed to know and then left them to it, finding that their teamwork was strangely good for people working nights at a part time job and not getting paid hardly anything. (He'd had a lot of employees who lasted a matter of days, not to mention the four cases that hadn't lasted an entire shift. Which was four hours.)

At first all five of them came in while the store was open and had to deal with customers while working with freight. Eventually upper management realized this was a poor decision. Aiba invariably became entangled in the customer's life, and ended up bounding around the store with them trailing behind. He often accidentally got them to buy more than they were meaning to because he was constantly throwing things in their cart, but he never ever got any work done until the last customer had gone home.

Nino frequently pretended to be a customer and had a freakish sense for when one was nearby. If his radar picked something up he scooted around a corner before being spotted and hid out wherever Ohno was for a while, and thus neither helped the customer nor did his work.

Sho tried really hard to be helpful, but tended to end up selling the wrong part or creeping customers out by offering to push their carts for them, and his wide greedy eyes when shoppers were accompanied by small children had caused more than one parent to steer clear of their store just to be safe.

Matsujun won over nine out of ten customers with his overt flirting, despite knowing nothing about any of the products, but that tenth customer tended to freak out over his winking and tongue waving and leave the store without paying for anything, resulting in the manager having to be called to turn off the alarms.

Ohno rarely noticed there were customers at all.

* * * * * * * *

Sho was afraid of heights but they made him use the order picker anyway because he was the only one strong enough to lift the water heaters, and they figured that if he's harnessed up anyway he might as well do all the OP work for the store. Everyone had a knack for calling him over the radio right as he was putting up his last box, so that he was still harnessed up but looking forward to being done, and then asking him to put up a whole aisle's worth of freight. Sho suspected they did it on purpose but was too nice to say no, and anyway sometimes he shuddered just thinking about Matsujun's skinny arms trying to heft anything heavier than lightbulbs.

Neither Sho nor Matsujun were allowed to operate anything heavier than the OP, Matsujun because he once tipped a cart off the forks of the big Cat and it had rolled down the sloping parking lot and dinged Aiba's car, and Sho because he'd somehow orchestrated a catastrophe out of an extremely safely wrapped pallet of toilet paper and a ceiling beam that everyone had thought physically impossible to hit.

Aiba insisted that he must have somehow bounced the toilet paper off the pallet in order for it to hit the ceiling, but no one else thought that was possible, although when he asked how it could have gotten up there otherwise they have no response. They did have a response when he wanted to use the reach truck to conduct an experiment to see how high he could get a pallet to bounce. Matsujun smacked him immediately, Nino pointed out the cameras all over the store, and even Ohno looked alarmed. Sho had learned to walk away as soon as any of it was brought up, although he's heard overly loud comments as he walked away about birds nesting in the raggedy leftover toilet paper wedged into the ceiling.

Aiba, surprisingly, had a steady hand with all of the machinery, especially the Cats, and tooled around on them beeping the horn jauntily while Matsujun scowled. Ohno was only allowed to drive with constant supervision, a task usually relegated to Sho or Nino, who had to yell at him every five minutes or so to remind him where he was and what he was doing, and how he shouldn't step off the platform into thin air because he was thinking about some strange Ohno thing. (At Sho's shriek Ohno somehow executed a twisting hip swivel that gets him back to safety, and Sho was torn between yelling at him and asking him to show him how the hell he'd done that.) Nino didn't take to any of the machines naturally, but he had buckled down and forced himself to become proficient at all of them. He did what he had to do quickly and with a slightly pained look on his face, but he always turned down Sho and Matsujun when they offered to do it instead, making sure to tease them thoroughly even while he picked up their slack.

* * * * * * * *

Everyone thought that Ohno was reserved until they got three beers in him one night after work and he started doing log rolls in the store parking lot to see how many tiny pebbles would stick to his shirt. When he had rolled from his mom's car all the way to where the pavement met the grass, he stopped, if only because Aiba was peeing over the edge and he was hit with the sudden urge to do the same. Nino, who had been following behind and cheering him on, grabbed Aiba as soon as he was done and left Ohno to stare into the lights of the parking lot across the street blearily and think about the route he was going to take with his boat the next day, until Sho came scurrying over saying there was a cop across the street, "and for god's sake put your dick back in your pants."

Matsujun tried to play it cool, sipping at his beer and leaning casually against the car, but after consuming a beer and a half he was draped over Aiba and telling him that he was really sorry for hitting his car and that he really wanted to live up to the standards of working that the rest of them set and that he thought maybe Nino thought he was stupid but he was going to show him just wait because next week he was going to pack out an entire pallet of lightbulbs in less than half an hour and even Nino couldn't do that and he thought the freight team was the _best_. During one sentimental assault on Aiba, in which he was waxing poetic about Ohno's work ethic and how beautiful his overheads were, Nino, walking by with an arm slung over Ohno's shoulders, poked him in the ribs with one small pointy finger, and Matsujun yelped so loudly that Sho jumped and turned reflexively to look and see if the cops were coming. Aiba gave a high-pitched laugh at the look on Sho's face, but he kept one hand stroking soothingly down the back of Matsujun's velour jacket.

It got cold, later, and Aiba suggested a group cuddle in Ohno's mom's car, which was met with negative response by everyone but Ohno, who immediately climbed in and curled up against a window. Nino's eyes widened and his protests cut off abruptly as he dove in after Ohno to make sure they'd be next to each other. Aiba shoved Sho in next, and then Matsujun after that, before stretching out over all of them with his head in Ohno's lap. (He only elbowed one person in the crotch and he considered it a victory, although he would have a bruise the next day from Matsujun's rings rapping his shoulder sharply.) His bony hip was digging into Sho's thigh, but Sho only smoothed a hand down his side and leaned his head on Matsujun's producted hair and sighed fondly. Matsujun soaked up the warmth of the car and hoped fervently that these people would like him, and stay with him, and that they'd have more nights like this so he could get comfortable with a group for once. Nino had buried his chilly nose in Ohno's soft orange hair, and Ohno was already passed out with his face smooshed against the window, feet warmly entangled with Nino's and hands still scritching through Aiba's hair. If Nino brushed a kiss over Ohno's neck, everyone was too warm and sleepy to notice, and Nino blamed the heat of his face afterward on the quarter of a beer he'd had an hour before.

Soon it was too cold to stay in the parking lot, even with their combined body heat and Aiba's wriggling attempts to create friction enough to keep them warm, and Nino climbed into the driver's seat and drove them home. He might have complained more about it if he hadn't gotten to knee Aiba in the head while getting up, not to mention gleefully sticking his hand down Ohno's pants to get the car keys. (Ohno didn't even twitch.) Aiba took over Nino's position between Sho and Ohno and they all fell back asleep as Nino took them to his house.

Nino opened Matsujun's door quickly, expecting him to fall out onto the pavement, but he didn't, and when he peered inside he saw Sho's arm wrapped firmly around Matsujun's skinny shoulders. Aiba and Ohno were curled together tightly on the other side and Sho and Aiba were holding hands. Nino paused. Aiba opened his eyes sleepily and smiled up at Nino and he felt himself smiling back involuntarily, which meant that the next thing he did was open the driver's door and beep the horn as loud as he could.

Once the car was clear and everyone had detached themselves from each other, there was an awkward moment for Nino, Sho, and Matsujun as they stood around and waited for something to happen. Aiba was stretching elaborately, his thin shirt riding up nearly to his ribs and his low-slung pants looking about to fall off. Ohno had executed a full circle without thinking, just moving because he was standing and unsure of where he was. Finally Ohno moved back toward the warm body he had been snuggling with, and tucked his head against Aiba, whose arm immediately wrapped around his shoulders. Nino suppressed a squawk, and grabbed the two hands nearest him and towed the drunken group inside by force of will. He led the way to a room filled with entertainment apparatus, and more importantly, with pillows and blankets. He pushed Aiba down roughly, grabbing Ohno's hand to keep him from following, and then grabbed Sho and shoved him down with Aiba. Matsujun stood by the door, uncertain, before Nino (with Ohno in tow) stalked over, grabbed him around the waist, and tripped him so that he was down with the rest. Without looking to see how they would arrange themselves, he pulled over another big cushion and nudged Ohno, who collapsed upon it on his stomach in contentment. Nino spared a glance at Sho and Aiba spooning themselves around a slowly relaxing Matsujun before he knelt and arranged himself so that he was half on Ohno, with his face tucked into Ohno's neck, and his arm tossed over his shoulders. He thought Ohno was asleep already, but then one hand emerged from under Ohno's body and curled around his. Nino smiled.


End file.
